Book excerpt: P. G. Wodehouse’s short stories are often set in the salons and townhouses of England, but he also wrote about golf, returning again and again to one of his favorite sports. Set against a background of the unique and often quirky world of golf in the early 1920s, Wodehouse produced a great collection of stories chronicling the loves and lives of golf fanatics. Starting around 1919 he wrote these golf stories regularly for both American and English magazines, and published two collections: The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922) and The Heart of a Goof (1926). He continued to write golf stories until the mid 1960s. Most of these stories are narrated by The Oldest Member, a talkative type who frames most of the stories by trapping other members of the club into listening to his “words of wisdom.” The stories in this collection are ordered by the date they first appeared in magazine form, and are mostly from the English editions—the main difference from the U.S. editions being the names and locations of the golf clubs. This book is part of the Standard Ebooks project, which produces free public domain ebooks.